Don’t ignore nagging back pain, it could be spinal TB

Just when 18-year-old Mulund resident Divyata Shah was looking forward to getting married and starting a new chapter in her life, she was gripped by a back pain of severe intensity.

Just when 18-year-old Mulund resident Divyata Shah was looking forward to getting married and starting a new chapter in her life, she was gripped by a back pain of severe intensity.

Little did she imagine that the pain which she was brushing off as another run of the mill backache would turn out to be the dreaded tuberculosis of the spine. Before she knew what struck her, her leg muscles gave up, she was unable to walk and was wheelchair bound in under a month.

Divyata visited a general practitioner in her locality who put her on a heavy dose of painkillers for over fifteen days but to no avail. “The back pain would just not subside. When it got worse and I was wheeled into a hospital, an MRI of the spine followed and the neurosurgeons recommended an urgent surgery.”

“The oozing pus was putting pressure on the spine and thus, she had paraplegia in both her legs. She got back on her feet after the surgery,” said Dr Viswanathan Iyer, neurosurgeon, Kohinoor Hospital.

Dr Aadil Chagla, professor of neurosurgery, KEM Hospital said the disease is hitting young working people who spend most of their time outdoors and thus, increase their chances of an infection. “Tuberculosis hits those organs where oxygen supply is high as the bacteria thrive on high oxygen,” he said.

Spinal tuberculosis, if not diagnosed and treated on a timely basis, can lead to paralysis, say doctors. “There are patients who tend to ignore niggling mid or upper back ache for as many as three months before being diagnosed with spinal TB. Delayed diagnosis can lead to permanent paralysis, infection of the bladder, renal failure and in worst cases, death. With timely treatment, an increasing number of cases are being salvaged,” added Dr Chagla.

maitri.porecha@dnaindia.net@mait_p

The rise in drug resistant strains of extra-pulmonary TB including that of spine is on the rise, say experts. “While a decade ago, one in close to a thousand cases of spinal TB would be multi-drug resistant (MDR), the incidence of MDR-TB in case of spine is close to 5% to 10% of the patient load,” Dr Chagla explained.